


Red Rose

by Zazou



Series: Bouquet [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Birth, F/M, Fatherhood, Motherhood, Patriarchy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zazou/pseuds/Zazou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A red rose symbolizes romantic love. This takes place in the same verse as White Rose and Pink Rose. </p><p>Sansa gives birth to her first child and it's a girl. She's afraid of how Willas will react. After all how can she earn his love without giving him sons?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Rose

“It’s a healthy girl.” Maester Lomys announced holding up the pink wailing babe. 

Sansa’s heart sank as she collapsed back onto her pillow exhausted and drenched in sweat. She had always wanted a daughter but she needed her firstborn to be a boy so she could prove herself to her husband’s family. Without sons how was she going to earn her husband’s love? If she couldn’t provide an heir her marriage would turn into a bitter husk like Aunt Lysa’s or Lady Selyse's. Willas was going to be so disappointed. He would try to hide his disappoint because he was a kind soul. But what if it ate away at him? At them? 

Maester Lomys swaddled the squirming babe. Sansa panted trying to catch her breathe. 

“You did very well.” Lady Aleria said handing her a cup of water.

Sansa eagerly slurped down the cold water. Turned out birthing was thirsty work. Maester Lomys handed her her babe and Sansa cradled her in her shaking arms. She stared down at her daughter in awe. She had stopped crying. She was such a little thing so fragile. Sansa counted her tiny fingers and toes. Her daughter had Willas’s amber eyes and dimples but her russet tresses. She had a Hightower nose and chin but lush Tyrell lips shaped like cupid’s bow. She was so lovely. She gurgled happily and gripped Sansa’s finger in her tiny fist. She prayed to the Mother that Willas would be as enchanted with her as she was. 

“She’ll be a real heartbreaker.” Lady Olenna observed from her perch on the velvet settee. “Red hair is rare south of the Trident.” 

Sansa grinned down at her daughter and smoothed out her soft tuffs of hair. She had been so nervous when she’d gone into labor a whole moon early. But her babe was healthy and strong if a tad on the small side. 

“What will you name her?” Lady Olenna asked before popping a fig into her mouth.

“I’m not sure.” 

She and Willas had discussed the names of their future sons often. Sansa had decided to name their first son Leyton after Willas’s grandfather. It was only fitting for the Tyrell heir to have a southron name. They’d name their second son after her father, and their third son after Renly. Sansa told her husband that she wanted to do this for Loras’s sake since anyone could see that he missed his king each and every day. He’d gotten teary eyed at that and took her breath away with kisses. 

But girls names…Her mother’s death was still too close for her to think about naming the child Catelyn. Naming her baby Arya somehow felt wrong, like she was giving up hope that her sister was still alive, where ever she was, which was something she refused to do. 

“I’ll talk to Willas about it.” 

“He should be back soon.” Her good mother said pressing a cold cloth to her forehead. “As soon as you went into labor I sent a missive to Old Town.” 

“He’s going to be furious that my son made him miss his first child’s birth.” Lady Olenna said taking far too much joy in the potential strife. “If only Mace would get off his enormous backside instead of insisting on using Willas as his proxy.” 

Lady Aleria was about to come up with a retort when Maester Lomys told everyone that Sansa should try and get some rest and swiftly herded her relatives out of the room. Soon she was alone in her bedchamber with her babe sleeping next to her in a bassinet covered in winter roses. 

As Sansa lay in her bed, sore and bone tired yet unable to sleep she tried to think of a name for her little girl. At first, she thought of naming her after a famous heroine but all the women in songs and legends had sad tales. Her Aunt Lyanna, Alyssa Arryn. She didn’t want that for her daughter. 

Mayhaps they should name her Cassana to appease Stannis Baratheon should he win the Iron Throne? It was a pretty name and rhymed with her own. But Stannis’s mother had met a tragic end of her own so mayhaps it was bad luck. She’d always liked the name Naerys but she'd suffered a loveless marriage. She thought briefly of Princess Daeryssa who’d been saved from the Giants but giving her a Targaryen name would feel like betraying her father. She’d loved the tale of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight but it was now tainted with memories of Joffery. Eventually, she gave in to her exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep. 

Over the next two days Sansa tried to calm her nerves about Willas’s reaction but it was no use. She reminded herself of how much Willas respected his mother and grandmother, how he loved and cherished his younger sister. But she couldn’t help but feel like a failure. The Tyrells had risked the Lannister’s wrath and snuck her out of King’s Landing in exchanged she had agreed to marry Willas. They had risked their collective necks because she could (theoretically) give them a Tyrell heir with a strong claim to the North. She hadn’t held up her end of the bargain. 

Sansa knew that she was lucky, her husband would never harm her. If she’d born Joffery a girl he’d probably beat her black and blue before the whole court. Rationally, she knew that although Willas doubtless wanted a son he would not forsake her just because she’d born him a daughter. But sons were the best way to a man’s heart everyone knew that. Willas had her heart so utterly and completely that it scared her at times. She thought that if she gave him a son mayhaps he would come to love her as she loved him. 

She learned how to breastfeed, and soothe her baby. She sang to her, played with her and took her to the long forgotten Godswood. All the while as she bonded with her newborn her dread of her husband’s rejection was still there. It was a living thing that thrashed and writhed inside her, making her sick with doubt and increasingly uneasy. She sat in Lady Olenna’s rocking chair, clutching her daughter to her chest. 

“If he doesn’t love us we’ll survive.” She whispered kissing her forehead. “We’ll just love each other.” 

\---

Sansa was napping when he came to her chambers, her hair unbound and her shift still unlaced from her babe’s last feeding; she awoke to find Willas sitting beside her on the bed, still dressed in his leathers with travel dust streaking his hands and face

“Morning sleepy head.” He whispered a big goofy grin. Embarrassed, she busied herself lacing up her shift. 

“My lord, I’m sorry to disappoint you but I am young and we can try again.” 

Sansa sat up and pushed her tangled hair out of her face. 

“My mother gave my father three healthy sons and his mother was the same.” 

“Sansa,” 

He interrupted shaking his head in disbelief his brows knitted together, but once she’d started she couldn’t stop. 

“Maestre Lomys said that it’s a good sign that my labor was so short, and that there wasn’t much bleeding.” 

“Sansa!” 

She was stunned. She’d never heard him raise his voice before. She picked at the embroidery on her bed sheets and kept her head down thoroughly chastened. He walked across the room slowly and sat down on her bed. He took her hand in his and squeezed it. With his other hand, he tilted her chin up making her look at him. 

“You’re not some broodmare to me.” He looked as if the very thought disgusted him. 

“I just saw our daughter and she’s beautiful and healthy.” 

Sansa smiled thinking on their babe. She was beautiful with her bright inquisitive eyes and her skin as soft as a rose petal. 

“I’m glad she has your eyes.” She mumbled looking up at him through her eyelashes.

“I’m glad she has your hair.” He said tucking an auburn strand behind her ear so he could see her better. 

He stroked her wrist with his thumb back and forth back and forth. It was oddly soothing. 

“I am in no great hurry to get an heir.” He whispered into her hair. 

“If we never have a son then Garlan’s little Edwyn could reign after me.” Willas said his tone surprisingly caviler. 

And everyone would hate me, Sansa couldn’t help but think. She could feel his fingers skim the side of her face in an affectionate caress. 

“Or we could shock everyone and adopt the Dornish tradition.” He teased. 

A strangled noise came out of her throat half laughter half sob. She just felt so relieved. She hadn’t known how much this had weighed on her until the weight was gone. He loved their daughter and she loved him even more for it. 

“I’m sorry, I just….” She sighed deeply and blinked back tears. Everything made her cry these days. Everything. 

“You’ve done so much for me and I’d hate to disappoint you.” 

Willas shook his head and nuzzled against her jaw, his coarse stubble tickling her soft skin. 

“You could never disappoint me. I love you.” 

She pulled back and stared at him thunderstruck. There was a pounding in her ears and her heart was in her throat. He’d said it as though it was common knowledge. As if it was a fact, the sun sets in the west, spring comes after winter, and I love you. 

Every since she was a little girl she’d imagined what it would be like when a man first told her he love her. Sometimes she pictured it him whispering it in her ear as they glided around a ballroom filled with glamorous courtiers, or when he declared her his Queen of Love and Beauty at a tourney. After her wedding night, she’d started fantasizing about Willas telling her in the heat of passion. He could be rather talkative in the bedroom. But never had she imagined that it would happen like this. When she was flabby and frumpy, eyes red from crying, skin blotchy and when she had just delivered him a baby girl. 

“Truly?” She asked her voice coming out as a squeak. 

Her husband smiled pressing their foreheads together. 

“Yes.” He whispered against her lips before pulling her into a deep kiss. His lips were chapped and tasted of sour wine yet they made her positively giddy. Eager for more contact she leaned into him and he wrapped his arms around her. Eventually, she was getting dizzy from the lack of air so she reluctantly pulled away. 

“I love you too.” She whispered, grinning. 

They rearranged themselves so that Sansa was leaning up against Willas’s chest.

“Now, what shall we call her?”

“I’m not sure but I have a whole list of names I don’t want to call her.” She sighed relaxing into her husband’s embrace. He chuckled and she felt the vibration of his chest. She closed her eyes thought of her babe and suddenly a name popped into her head. 

“Lyra.” 

“Lyra?” 

“It’s in the old tongue. It was my grandmother’s name.” 

Her grandmother had died long before she was born but her father and Uncle Benjen had always spoken fondly of her. She was a Flint of Widow's Watch, "Ever Vigilant." According to her father, she loved horses and needlework and had a devilish grin. On her tenth name day, her father had given Sansa her grandmother’s pendant of dragon glass and fire opals. It was one of the few keepsakes she still had. 

The name was fitting for although her daughter would be raised in the Reach Sansa would be sure that she knew that the blood of the First men flowed through her veins. She would observe the old ways, and know that her grandfather was a hero, not a traitor. 

“It’s beautiful. You know, there’s a constellation named Lyra.” 

Sansa suddenly remembered back in King’s Landing Margaery had told her that Willas drew her maps of the stars when she was a little girl. Now she imagined her little Lyra sitting on her father’s lap as he taught her about the wonders of the universe. That's when it dawned on her that she had a family again.

**Author's Note:**

> I could not find any information on Eddard Stark's mom so I made Lyra up. It sounded like a northern name.


End file.
